A POLICEMAN accused of indecently assaulting a vulnerable woman prisoner in a police station told a court he was sexually abused as a child.

Pc Jan Platts says he was attacked when he was a member of a youth football team when he was 13.

The event, he told Warrington Crown Court, has haunted him over the years.

The 48-year-old custody officer at Longsight police station, Manchester, is accused of a series of sexual encounters with the woman, 27, who was being held overnight on her way to starting a 12-month sentence at Styal prison for theft.

She has told the court that he forced her to strip and parade herself, then to perform a sex act on him and was finally indecently assaulted by him.

He claims that it was he who was the victim of a sexual assault when he took a cup of tea to her cell.

DNA tests have shown that sexual contact did take place between the married father of a six-year-old son and the heroin addicted, mentally unstable woman.

Within minutes of her leaving the police station on her way to jail, she complained to a Group 4 security officer and detectives were called in.

At first, Pc Platts said nothing about the encounter. But later, when told that she could describe the boxer shorts he was wearing, he gave an account of what had happened.

The constable insisted he merely showed her kindness, giving her cigarettes and taking her for walks in the exercise yard.

He claimed she said to him: "You've been very kind to me" and suddenly unzipped his trousers and performed a sex act for three or four seconds.

"I pushed her away and said No," he insisted. "She looked up at me and smiled and I backed out of the door." Pc Platts, from Glossop, denies indecent assault and misconduct in a public office.